We were kinda just kidding when we suggested this might be the Year of Free/Subscription Poker. I mean we knew we were gonna see some moves into WSOP poker space by various free American-friendly play money sites … but how that would translate at the 2011 World Series (and beyond) wasn’t so clear. It still isn’t. But Rise, makers of those douchebag-free poker clothes and now an online poker site … is showing that they will indeed be a force in the free poker future … whatever that might mean.
Move over Full Tilt Poker dot net. Scotty Nguyen sends the whole table a virtual Corona!
Personally, I don’t think they coulda picked better pros — Scotty Nguyen, Maria Ho, Jean Robert Bellande, and Dani Stern, aka Ansky (not pictured) — even better than a Team of Brunson, Hellmuth, and Negreanu, imho. If you don’t see why these pictured three +Ansky should do incredibly well @RisePoker … well, I could tell you, but, well … let’s say it goes beyond just “Asian”.
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Maybe people are just jonesing to click-and-raise or maybe various industry stalwarts are starting to see the new poker era that dawned upon us on April 15th isn’t all about tearing down Full Tilt and PokerStars [update: and now Doyle’s Room] in their battle with the DOJ … it’s about building new structures that will become the basis for the game (and industry surrounding it) in the 21st century. (That’s how Vegas-style implosions work.)
Rise — those clothing makers who you may recall came onto the scene a while back as the people trying to remove the d-bagginess from poker fashion — has partnered with Poker Royalty, the pre-eminent poker representative agency, to launch a new fully legal play-for-free online poker site with real cash prizes. Though I do have to wonder when they say their new poker team will include “some of the most recognizable poker players in the world” … are they talking about pros who may or may not have deals currently with dot-net (lol) online sites or the likes of @kevmath?
ZEN Entertainment, the operation powering the new Rise Poker room, is the group that recently launched the Hustler Casino’s online poker site. Though we weren’t necessarily anticipating a clothing line getting in on the action before more casinos … and two doesn’t necessarily make for a statistical trend … Pokerati is feeling good about our newsy speculation that the upcoming 2011 WSOP may indeed be full of free online qualifiers, which would be kinda different from WSOP’s past.
Read below for the official announcement:
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